Everywhere I went, I saw the same thing: Employees didn’t understand what they signed up for. Brokers didn’t really understand either. HR didn’t want to touch it. Claims were denied. People thought their plans sucked.

Termination isn't just a button in your HRIS. It's a tightly regulated event. It's the kind of process where everyone is watching. That’s why HR and managers feel so much pressure to keep it confidential. But too much confidentiality means the people responsible for execution don’t have enough time to get it right. 

If you're thinking, "But wait, that sounds like my company..."  That's the point.  These situations come up in all kinds of companies. They're as common as meetings that could have been emails. 

I don't know who needs to hear this, but Qualifying Life Events (QLEs) aren't written in stone.

Putting words to those operating principles won’t just help someone ramp faster. It gives your whole team a shared language to spot and fix misalignments.

Ops drag isn’t obvious at first, but it compounds quickly. Fortunately, small systems create big leverage. And a few smart fixes now can save you from spending your days scrambling as you grow.

You don’t need HR. You need infrastructure. And a little foresight before the next fire drill. You can't scale on vibes and Airtable alone. 

These problems don’t show up right away. They lie in wait until someone balances the books and notices thousands of dollars missing. 

The company had built an "inclusive" culture that didn’t distinguish between employees and contractors. The systems were set up to put a fig leaf over the fact that there were two classes of team members.